SPIRAL CITY

CITY DREAMS

The
Spiral City moves to the rhythms of routine, controlling conformity
with necessities and ideals. In regulating each day to be exactly the
one before the monstrous metropolis operates like a machine. The
buildings take the shape of tombstone tower cogwheels while crowds
provide the energy required to fuel the machine. Like a vertigo
vortex the city swallows the individual whole transmuting each tiny
life force into a misdirected conglomeration of anonymity and
alienation. Lost in an endless and cyclical maze the expendable
denizens race around in a frenzied peregrination to oblivion.

The
“City of Gears” imagery was really interesting to experiment
with. The symbolic likening of our daily existence to a metaphysical
factory that creates nothing still resonates with me even though I
started these drawings over 10 years ago. I felt it was a very
striking metaphor and that it was the most accurate expression of my
experiences at that time. Over time I continued to use this symbol
and it evolved taking on many different forms. The energy and motion
of the work changed many times taking on various moods and eventually
the crowds became fleshed out filled with individual characters
rather than blank faces. In addition to the fine artworks I also
transposed the City of Gears into a comic book world using it as the
set or location for all my graphic novels.

The
aesthetic symbol itself was also very appealing. Despite being a
tedious and labour intensive image to create, I never got bored of
making these. There were so many possibilities using various camera
angles, perspectives and patterns that I ended up drawing over 50
variations for my first exhibition. Most of these were small 5 x 7
inch works but there were several poster sized ink drawings and at
least two larger version as well. It is also interesting to note that
this was in fact the first symbol that I ever created. It was
probably just a few months before I started taking black and white
drawing seriously. I painted a giant city of gears on the
basement floor of my parents house. This first version used black,
white and red a featured a giant eyeball in the center very much like the image on this page. My parents
were very tolerant of my craziness when it came to art but I remember
their frustration when they were showing the basement to potential
buyers before we moved from that place.